


Steady Footing

by SilverMoon53



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Panic Attacks, Platonic Kidge, Platonic Relationships, bad self care, boy/girl friendships, pidge gets shit done, starts kinda cute and funny and fluffy but this is me so that doesn't last long, these kids have trauma oh boy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 22:16:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12177585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverMoon53/pseuds/SilverMoon53
Summary: Pidge is good at many things. Coding, robotics, and sneaking into enemy bases to steal information, are all quite high on that list. People, however, arenotone of the things she’s good at.OrKeith has a panic attack while on a mission. Pidge has an… interesting way of making sure he gets out alive.





	Steady Footing

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to computedwings280 and sonderesque here on Ao3 for betaing for me!

It was Shiro who noticed first.

Pidge was occupied, her fingers a blur across the Galra keyboard, glasses reflecting the rapid information that danced across the screen. Lance and Hunk were off on the other side of the ship, keeping the soldiers occupied and away from her as she completed her part of the mission. Shiro and Keith were with her, making sure no one snuck up while she pieced through the lines of code and intel.

As such, Shiro was the only one who wasn’t neck-deep in work and the only one available to notice the change in Keith’s demeanor.

Pidge was aware of Shiro calling Keith’s name, and the movement at their end of the room. She took great pride in her ability to multitask, and how she always had at least a vague idea of what was going on around her. However, the lack of blaster fire and or increase in out-of-focus figures was not enough of a disturbance to sway her from her work. Pidge had a job to do, one that only she had the skill to complete, and so as long as she wasn’t in immediate danger, she saw no reason to stop.

Still. A commotion was a commotion, and Pidge had seen enough to know that it was always a good idea to hurry up when something went down. With part of her mind on whatever it was Shiro and Keith were doing, and part listening on the coms to how Lance and Hunk were holding up, and the rest trying to hurry up, Pidge felt she could hardly be blamed for stumbling over a tripwire. It was a simple mistake, albeit one she usually was above making. While it took Pidge nothing more than a few lines of code – as well as a few choice swear words that would have gotten her mouth washed out with soap back home – to get around it, she had most likely alerted the Galra to her presence in the system.

“Hey!” Lance’s voice cut through Pidge’s thoughts and she groaned. Sometimes being right all the time _sucked._ “Get back here!”

“Uhh, guys?” Hunk’s voice was nervous, unsure. “Why are the sentries all heading over to you?”

“My bad,” Pidge grumbled. “I accidentally tripped a wire. I got all the information though, just need to back it up to take back to the castle. Any chance you can hold them off for another few minutes?”

“We’ll do our best, but they seem pretty intent on getting over there,” Lance said.

“How long until they get here?”

“I’d say you have five minutes, tops. Maybe less.” Hunk’s voice was strained, as though he was running. A blast sounded near him, the sound of the explosion just catching his mic enough to send some static to the others. “Probably less.” With a quick wave of her hand, Pidge changed the timer in the corner of her visor down to three minutes from the five it had set itself to at Hunk’s first estimate. The voice-command timers she had installed were a lifesaver – literally sometimes.

At the edge of her awareness, Pidge knew that Keith and Shiro should have been involved in that conversation, but she could still see them and had to finish up, so she paid their silence no mind. It only took her a few more ticks to finish backing the information up. Then, because they knew she had been there anyway, she took another 20 seconds to change all the system passwords to _Pidgeisthebest!_ and set her hacking icon to the background. Satisfied with her work, Pidge swiped the screen away and looked up, ready to give the signal that she was ready to leave.

Her words died in her throat when she finally got a good look at her teammates. Keith was huddled in the corner, eyes wild with fear as he heaved shallow breaths. His arms were held defensively in front of him, but they were shaking too much to be effective and his bayard hung, useless and forgotten, off his hip. Shiro was murmuring softly to Keith, though the latter seemed too out of it to notice.

“Lance, Hunk, we have a problem,” Pidge said with a quick glance to her countdown. “Keith’s down, any chance you can buy us some more time?” Both began to protest, asking if Keith was okay, but Pidge cut them off with a growl. “Just do what you can.”

Muting her link, Pidge stepped around the console and stood next to Shiro, looking at Keith with a mix of curiosity and annoyance. “We gotta go,” she said simply. Shiro shook his head.

“There’s no way to get Keith out of here until he calms down. He just needs another minute to ride this out.”

“Panic attack?” Pidge asked, one eye on the countdown. There was just under over a minute left, and she _really_ didn’t want to push her luck, especially if Keith was so out of it. Shiro nodded and Pidge sighed in irritation. She could already hear the Galra approaching, the stomping of many feet echoing down the hall towards them. Pidge took a second to weigh her options and made her decision. In one fluid movement, she activated her bayard and ducked under Keith’s arms, electrocuting him. Ignoring Shiro’s shocked cry, she waited until Keith slumped over and stowed her bayard once more. Pulling one of his arms over her shoulder, Pidge cast a dark glance at Shiro.  
“Look. He wasn’t going to calm down soon enough for us all to get out unscathed, and trying to move him while he’s in a panic attack was only going to make things worse. We can move him like this, and deal with his mental health later, when we’re not twenty seconds from being blown to bits. Now are you going to help me carry him out or do I have to drag his sorry ass to Green myself?” Already, the Galra were banging on the locked door. Shiro took a second to glance between his teammates and the quickly weakening metal before ducking down to scoop up Keith. Pidge smirked. “Follow me, and save the lecture for when we’re safely in the Castle again, ‘kay?”

***

A low groan filled the medical room, but Pidge didn’t look up from the screen in front of her. She finished writing her loop, saved her program, and carefully closed her laptop before turning her head to face the bed the groan had come from.

“Here,” she said, casually tossing a water pack to Keith. He fumbled with it, just managing to keep it from falling to the floor. Pidge pointedly ignored his lack of coordination, opting instead to swirl her chair to face him properly.

“What happened?” Keith asked, voice groggy and dry. He managed to get his straw through the hole and drank greedy as he eyed Pidge. She smirked.

“First of all, the mission was a success, thank you very much. Second, the shock was calibrated to knock you out, nothing more. You’ll have no lasting damage; ask Coran if you don’t believe me. It wasn’t even enough to stick you in a pod, though Shiro insisted I wait with you until you wake up.”

“I- you- _what_?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said casually, “I figured something like this would happen at some point. Of course, I kinda figured it would happen to Shiro, what with the obvious PTSD and all, but I decided I may as well calibrate a setting for everyone on the team, just in case.” She smirked again, smugness practically dripping off her.

“What?” Keith repeated, clearly not understanding what Pidge was talking about.

“Geeze, I thought you were smart,” Pidge snarked with a good-natured roll of her eyes. “We were on an intel gathering mission. You and Shiro were supposed to keep me safe, you remember that much?” He nodded and she continued. “Only, like the emo edge lord you are, you decided to have a panic attack. Shiro couldn’t talk you out of it and the Galra were closing in. So I zapped you with my bayard so Shiro could carry your sorry ass out safely.” Pidge interlocked her fingers, cracked them loudly, then put them behind her head and leaned back. “You’re welcome,” she added, grinning at Keith’s stunned face.

When he didn’t say anything for several seconds, Pidge let out a weary sigh and hunched over. “Drink more,” she instructed as she tossed him another pack of water. He caught it much more gracefully this time, though he still struggled with the straw. “I know you don’t drink enough,” Pidge continued, all mirth gone from her voice. “Just like Lance doesn’t eat enough, and Shiro doesn’t sleep enough. I monitor everyone’s intake, a simple algorithm I set up months ago,” she explained, not looking up but feeling his questioning look. “At least Hunk seems to know how to take care of himself, though he’s enough of a nervous wreck that it’s probably the only thing keeping him together. And then there’s me.” Pidge let out a short, bitter laugh. “The hypocrite. I’m worse than all of you combined, I’m just better at hiding it than the rest of you.”

Silence filled the air. Pidge knew that Keith was trying to piece together his own memories of what had happened, and was just thankful that he was ignoring her sniffles as she had ignored his fumbling.

“I’m sorry,” Keith suddenly blurted out after a few minutes of heavy silence. Pidge’s head shot up so fast that the chair swiveled underneath her. 

“You should be!” Pidge shouted at him, throwing yet another water pack at him with a lot more force. Whatever sadness had been weighing her down was suddenly smothered under fiery anger. “Asshole! You-“

“I’m sorry!” Keith cut her off again, and she could see genuine regret – and perhaps a bit of fear – in his eyes through her fury. “I didn’t mean to put you in danger, I-“

“Oh, shut up!” Pidge snapped. Tears fell from her eyes but rage roared in her veins as she glared her teammate down. He may be half Galra, but Pidge could stare down anyone, anytime, and he dropped his gaze. “Just shut up! You idiot! You think I’m mad about _that?_ I got your sorry ass out, didn’t I? We got what we went in for, didn’t we? No one got hurt! I don’t care that you had a panic attack, or that you have trauma.”

“I don’t have trauma,” Keith tried to protest, an automatic response that came far too quickly to be honest, and Pidge just scoffed.

“Oh, really?” She continued to glare him down, counting off on her fingers as she continued, “Let’s see, you lost Shiro, who was practically your only remaining family – to something you _knew_ was a lie, no less – got kicked out of school for trying to find the truth, found him crash-landed from space, got swept up into an intergalactic, millennia-long war for _literally the fate of the universe_ and have been fighting for your life ever since, on top of whatever shit happened in your life before all that went down. No _shit_ you have trauma, we all do! So who gives a shit?” She broke off, panting from her bitter outburst and throwing her arms in the air. Keith still looked as pissed as she felt, though it was buried under a layer of confusion and shock.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, after another pause. Pidge waved him off, not done.

“I don’t care about any of that,” she said, a lot calmer after yelling but still clearly seething. “Hell, I don’t even care that you haven’t told me about any of your baggage. And I don’t even want to hear it, because you’ll tell me if and-slash-or when you feel the need to. I’m pissed because you didn’t come to us, to any of us, for help. We’re a _team,_ Keith. We help each other.”

“I-I didn’t think you’d understand,” Keith muttered, hesitant and unsure. Pidge shot him a pointed look.

“Have you met Hunk?” she asked dryly. Keith snorted.

“I didn’t think of that,” he admitted.

“Yeah, no shit.” Suddenly he met her gaze, and they were laughing.

It wasn’t the real laughter of humor, or even the uneasy laughter humans default to when nervous. It was the honest laughter of two broken kids, who were in over their heads and knew it, but had no choice. It was loud and rough and choppy and _damaged,_ a necessary release of emotion and a desperate cry for help that they both knew would go unanswered.

Slowly, it petered off into silence, but not the uneasy lack of noise it had been. It was soft, and quiet, and comforting. Keith opened up one of the water packs and started to drink, watching as Pidge turned back to her laptop. The brightness all the way down, she watched his watery reflection as she opened up her code once more. Neither one spoke for a while, the silence broken only by the crinkle of Keith’s water package and the clacking of Pidge’s keyboard. They both needed a few moments to collect themselves, to slow their racing hearts and calm their nervous systems. But they both also knew the discussion was not over, so when he was halfway finished his drink, she stopped typing. She couldn’t bring herself to face him again just yet, but he put his water down and they watched each other in the frail reflection of her laptop.

“I started having panic attacks when my father and brother first went to space,” she explained, watching his blurry form shift over lines of code. “They got worse after Kerberos, obviously. And then my mom died and everything went to shit. A fake ID made getting prescriptions impossible, but I was able to cobble something together in the chem lab at the _Garrison_.” She spat the last word, her contempt mirrored in Keith’s contorted expression. “Then Voltron happened. I figured Hunk would have the same problem as me, or at least similar, and the two of us managed to find an alien equivalent, reverse engineered from the pills he had with him when we left Earth. It’s not perfect, but it helps, and we’d be happy to make some for you if you need it.” She turned to face her teammate again. “The point I’m making here is that you don’t have to do this alone, whatever _this_ is for you.” Pidge gave her hands a vague wave, but kept her eyes intensely on his. “We’re a _team,_ Keith,” she repeated. Her expression softened and her shoulders slumped. She could feel tears in her eyes again, bitter, sad ones instead of her previous angry ones. She deflated, head down, eyes squeezed shut and fists clenched tightly by her sides. “I can’t lose anyone else. Especially not because you’re being a stubborn ass.”

Keith snorted at that, but at least didn’t try to deny it. Pidge could hear him shuffling on the bed again and looked up when he patted the spot beside him. Wordlessly, she got up and sat down against him.

Neither of them was particularly good at dealing with emotions, their own or others. Pidge knew this. 

They were both blunt, socially awkward-bordering-on-inept, and angry. They both protected themselves in the jaded armour of the broken and the wronged, and had a tendency to push people away because it’s easier to not have friends because you don’t have friends, than it is to not have friends because you were hurt by those you trusted. They both kept to themselves and had gone a long time without letting their guard down enough around someone to be comforted by another. Pidge knew all of this, but she also knew that Keith was even worse at physically comforting others than she was. 

So when he awkwardly wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close as tears slipped past, Pidge knew _exactly_ how much the small, seemingly meaningless, gesture meant.

“I’m sorry, Pidge,” he said as her tears subsided once more. “I didn’t think of it like that, and I certainly didn’t mean to hurt you, or anyone else on the team.” He gave her a squeeze and let her pull away. “I think I’ll take you and Hunk up on that offer, if you’re still willing to.” Pidge glared at him and he chuckled. “I’ll take that as a ‘no shit,’ then.” This got them laughing again.

The laughter was more real this time, but also a lot less intense. It only lasted a few seconds, hardly more than a shared snicker, but it helped them relax a lot more. They sat together for a few more minutes of comfortable silence, neither wanting to be the one to break it.

“I’m sorry,” Keith blurted out again, then threw his hands up defensively when Pidge rounded on him. “Not for this!” he clarified quickly and pressed on before she could speak. “For yelling at you. Y’know, back when you first wanted to leave?” He sighed and looked away. Pidge waited stiffly for him to continue, not sure where he was going but not wanting to stop him from opening up. “I didn’t get it – your drive to find your family, I mean. I-I never knew my mom, and my dad died when I was 10. For the longest time, Shiro was the only family I had. Then I had him back, and you wanted to endanger him by going after your family. I didn’t think about how you felt.”  
He pushed himself up, standing uneasily for the first second as if unsure he could support his own weight. Once satisfied his electrocution had no lasting effects – Pidge had to bite her tongue to keep from saying “I told you so,” did he really think she didn’t know what she was doing with her own bayard? – he started pacing.

Keith’s eyes were wide as he walked back and forth, his mouth working wordlessly. Pidge forced her body to relax to help calm him down, unhappy to see him so riled up. She gave him a minute to figure out what he was going to say, but as time stretched on she got bored. 

“Keith, chill,” she said. She kept her eyes locked on his until he stilled long enough to meet her gaze. “It’s okay, I forgive you. And, for what it’s worth, I get it.” Keith stared at her, clearly not fully believing her. Pidge shrugged a shoulder and patted the bed beside her, beckoning him to sit down again. “You had gotten your family back, so you could see the big picture. I didn’t, so I couldn’t,” she explained. “It’s a simple as that.”

It wasn’t that simple, not really, and they both knew it, but neither felt like it was worth pushing. Keith muttered a quiet “Thank you,” and the pair dropped into silence again. It was Keith who broke it again.

“I’m still sorry,” he said once more. “I didn’t realize how important it was for you to find your Father and brother. I didn’t know your mom was dead.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Pidge scoffed, barely able to hold back a flinch at the mention of her mother. “I hadn’t told you.” She had hoped he wouldn’t of remembered that small detail, as it was one she hadn’t let herself deal with properly. She looked down and away, stifling a sigh. “I never told anyone.” Tears started to well up in her eyes but her voice continued in a low monotone that she wasn’t sure she could stop if she tried. She didn’t know if she wanted to. “She got hit by a car while walking our dog. It was just a few days after we saw the news about the Kerberos mission, and she was trying to keep a routine. She always walked the dog after supper while I did the dishes.” Her words were matter-of-fact and calm despite the tears falling from her chin, as though she was trying to cut herself off from the pain but not quite managing. “I saw it all from the window. A car hopped the curb, driver drunk off his ass, and just like that-” Her voice hitched and she broke off. She feebly lifted her hand and snapped as she continued. “Just like that, I was an orphan.

“After that, finding my dad and brother was all that mattered. I erased all evidence of Katie Holt from existence, became Pidge Gunderson, and joined the Garrison to find out anything I could. And, of course, you know the rest.” She raised her head and irritably wiped her tears away. 

“Yeah. Shiro came back, which means that your family is still out there. And,” he paused, as though trying to figure out how to word what he wanted to say next. Pidge waited, wiping the last of her tears away. “And until you find them, I guess, uh, we can be your family.” He looked at her uneasily, waiting for her response. 

“God _dammit,_ Keith,” she grumbled, glaring at him. “We were having a nice moment and then you had to go and make it something _cheesy_.” She punched him on the shoulder, though smiled to show her appreciation for his words. “Who do you think you are, Lance?”

“Hey!” Keith tried to protest but Pidge had already jumped up and started towards the door. 

“Come on,” she said, “you must be hungry. Shiro would kill me if he knew you’ve been awake for this long and haven’t eaten yet. And I’m already in enough trouble with him for zapping you, so we’re going to the kitchen and I’m making you something to eat.”

She could hear Keith scramble to his feet behind her, still muttering something about how there was no way he was like Lance. Then he seemed to process what Pidge had said and his footsteps stopped. “ _You’re_ going to cook me something?” he asked. She turned around and winked at him.

“Hey! I can cook,” she said, indignant, as she turned back to lead the way to the kitchen. “Reheating Hunk’s leftovers counts as cooking, right?”

The sound of Keith’s laughter floated out after her as she walked down the hallway and Pidge smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr at https://cloudcoveronclearnights.tumblr.com/ or on Discord: cloudcover#7167 
> 
> Feel free to send me a message and just start talking!


End file.
